“The Dip”

On Sunday, the Woods invited the huz and I over for a “stockdog party” as I liked to call it. The idea of people just getting together, not for lessons, not formally, to just work dogs was so neat to me. People do that?

I wasn’t sure what it would entail, but what it was was a practice for the trials coming up. Dustin took me into the arena and showed me the course – take the cattle through the barrels in the middle of the arena, then flip them back through a Y chute and turn them back out to the middle, and then pen them in a tight, triangular pen with a small opening.

I really didn’t know how how to go about these things, because watching his first dog do it – he is way more finished than Rippa so Dustin walked me through it. It was a lot more obedience training than it was letting Rippa work, but it was good for both of us and we started figuring it out. Good for me to read the cattle better and good for Rippa to hold her line when I tell her to instead of anticipating.

I brought my camera, too, but it was hard to take good photos with such a tight course. The above is the Y chute, where you take the dog through the panel and then use yourself to redirect them.

It was very good to learn how to maneuver like that and Rippa had a good handle on things for the most part, though we need a lot more training in her feeling in control with the cattle before I want to trial. There’s one in April coming up that Shannon has encouraged me to try, but it’s right when I open my new climbing gym and I really, really want to hold off until I know I won’t embarrass Aussies everywhere – NCA doesn’t have beginner, it has Rancher (dogs that haven’t won anything), Open, and Pro. All of which are levels up from where I am. I can send Rippa to fetch cattle and everything, but it won’t be as clean and pretty as it was for most of the runs I’ve seen at these trials and people have feelings about Aussies that I don’t want to perpetuate. After all, I want spectators to think, “Wow, nice dog. I would consider an Aussie.”

But I decided that after that, I really needed to fix some of the stuff that we’ve got holes on because of various reasons.

Various reasons: my bad timing, my hysteria from learning how to handle badly, my not wanting to make strong points to Rippa because I didn’t want to be hysterical – all of which lead to Rippa not balancing very well and wanting to come in tight all the time.

So, I went to sheep yesterday and brought my camera along. For some reason the shots I did at Stephanie’s didn’t turn out, but it is BEAUTIFUL there.  We worked on three things: not cutting the top on her outruns, making her lay down way out when the sheep come on balance, and some pen work.

I feel like I have the first two handled, and Rippa was a champ. Just need to reinforce it. But the pen work? Sigh? Rippa is great at getting stock out of pens – even awkward ones. With everyone’s coaching about chilling, it worked and Rippa is super nice even in tight spaces. When is she NOT nice? When the sheep pass through the gate and head wherever they head in a hurry.

At this point, Rippa will shoot like a bat out of hell, generally end up in the middle to get to the heads and turn them around. But it’s not controlled and confident, and while sometimes it’s nice, sometimes it’s really, really not.

Today was that day.

When I left Stephanie’s, I pulled to the side of the road and had myself a little cry.

I just have so many questions about this whole thing: I know so very little and also so much compared to some. I know that Rippa’s a nice dog, not just because I think so, but people are always telling me when they see her, but this is not going smoothly along, it’s not easy, we get hurt along the way . . . and for what? I don’t think that stockdog training is kind to the animals we train on. It can be better than some, but at other times? The stock don’t deserve what the dogs can do to them sometimes. People are okay with it – they say that’s how we learn, but like . . . I have been at this for years now and I’m only discovering what I don’t know and I don’t know where to land on what is next. I do this thing where I post on the Internet about stuff (ha ha, here I am) and people smack me down sometimes even though I know that I’m not wrong and that the people who talk are spouting dogma without much to back it up. But I’m not much better, eh? So what is right? How do I know?

Finally, I was like, “Ugh, you’re already out here and you’re bummed, why not go for a lovely drive over to see Jennifer and the ducks? You don’t have to work them – in fact, you probably don’t want to. But it’s good to see friends and beautiful places.”

Good call. I told Jen how I was feeling and she told me to hop on her horse and ride up into the hills with her daughter, but I was like, “No . . . I am way out of whack and I shouldn’t be doing stuff with animals right now. The animals suffer.” Jen asked me, if that’s how I feel when I work, why am I doing it? And I was quick, “Because most of the time I feel amazing!” “Well then!”

So I headed down to the ducks, who were out in the pasture area eating up the tall grass, bugs, and other goodies. This is their first green spring and they love it!

I decided I owed the Fury at least a little working for watching dogs work on Sunday and Rippa today, so I set the arena up and sat down for a minute.

Stephanie and I were talking before I worked her sheep and she said two things to me that came to me as I was sitting there – I had complained to her about how I was feeling torn about everything.

1. She said she’d seen a photo recently where the dog’s getting pushed out with the stick and that makes the dog go in tighter rather than giving space and pressure.

2. She said that I know enough to make the right decisions.

#1 was certainly true during sheep (and cattle, when I get upset, Rippa goes in tighter), and since she had faith in me even though stuff didn’t go well that day, I could probably do this.

And so, I put the Fury on the ducks. She tends to run in really tight, especially on the Go-By side out of frustration with me and take it out on the stock, so instead of going to confront her and pushing her out, I tried Stephanie’s method and took pressure off of her that was coming from me. Bam. Worked like a charm. The Fury has not worked so well in a while.

I tried it with Rippa and again . . . bam. Like a charm.

And my day was now turned around.

I recently read a book called The Dip by Seth Godin – a book about when to quit. In it, he says, you should quit if you don’t think you’re going to be The Best in the World at something.

Okay, before I go further, I have zero idea what that means for me in this area. I don’t want to be The Best in the World at stockdog trialing, I know that. It would be cool to be that kind of trainer, but I don’t have to be. But I’m headed toward something, and we’ll see where that goes.

But, if you’re on the path to Best in the World, this is what it will look like:

So far, that’s pretty much what I feel like has happened. When I got The Fury, I peaked a bit, but then when it became obvious that I wasn’t going to get much further without a lot more mileage and she was probably “ruined” and the dip sank. Then I got Rippa and it was exciting, but when my stockdog options dried up, major low point. I think I’m at the crest upward, and it looks like once I get stuff dialed, according to Seth, it’s a short trip to the payoff.

But how the heck I’m supposed to keep the faith in myself, keep building my understanding of the bigger picture (it’s severely lacking – all vague right now – when I was training under Kathy, I grasped the mechanics of the training to its own end, but not of the bigger picture of the dog working in a ranch setting, and certainly not trialing), keep working on my handling skills while trying not to reinforce bad habits I’ve put into Rippa, and get Rippa feeling totally in control of the stock.

Dang, that’s a lot.

The hardest part is the amount of opinions on the subject. Everyone has one – and I was once sheltered by Kathy’s opinions only, but Stephanie has different ideas and Shannon has different ideas and Dustin and books and the Internet. I feel like I “get” Kathy’s ideas. I know “better” like Stephanie says. Kathy’s message has been transmitted, but I’m so damned open minded – I don’t want to be dogmatic about things, I want to be open to new ideas, but MAN, does that make life confusing.

And what do I do every time? Go back to what I learned from Kathy. I’m wondering if I should learn something from that. heh.

Gratitude and Getting There

So I haven’t written in a while because I needed some processing time. After the trial, I was SUPER sore. Like I had an epic workout. I was also emotionally drained. The husband was like, “Well, duh. I expected you to stress and you did. You put a lot into this.”

We went on a big work trip scouting for a race we put on right after. The dogs LOVED it. The Fury was about 5 weeks post her big surgery to fix her leg and, you know what, I admit it, we let it ride. She was able to come along on hikes with us and we watched it carefully but no issues. We got cleared a week later and he said she looked phenomenal, especially for her age, so I don’t feel bad. I happen to think my huz and I are pretty good at understanding our dogs’ health.

Plus, they got to see snow. Rippa spent a lot of time post-holing in it, both of them eating it, and the Fury, well . . .

In the middle of the week, I had a lot of time on my hands because I was shuttling my husband on his bike because the dogs couldn’t come and sitting in the car a lot. I kept thinking about that trial. About how I couldn’t qualify after all this time and it didn’t seem right and really, if that’s the case, whose fault is that? Maybe Aussies really are crap after all and I should give it up. I mean, really, what I really thought was that I was probably crap and things weren’t ever going to get better because I KNEW what to do but I couldn’t seem to grasp it.

So I asked about it on the Internet and my friends helpfully suggested lots of things, but when the people at the trial chimed in, the message was “You did good. It takes practice to trial well. Calm down.”

I have been talking to a friend fairly new to the breed and she was saying she wish she’d gotten into it when she was as young as me (I was 12) but getting into it that young also messed me up a bit – I REALLY care about stuff. And as much as I get annoyed with “dog fanciers” and their competing to know more intellectually without actually knowing it common-sense/experience-wise, I’m one too. I have to stop WORRYING about what it all means and trust myself that I probably know things are fine.

So, I couldn’t WAIT to get back to stockdogging after the trip. I took everyone’s advice to heart. Maxine said that I needed to let her take control to start and then trust my dog and she’d be night and day. At the time I literally couldn’t understand that. Couldn’t put it into practice. A couple people who agree with her (okay, EVERYONE agrees with her), suggested I muzzle her when I work so I can relax because I just HATE it when she hurts the stock. I looked around for my muzzle but couldn’t find it in the move and decided that I could do what Maxine (and everyone else) said without it.




Wait for it . . .

 

Wait for it . . .

 

HOLY CRAP, IT WORKED! I stopped worrying about what Rippa looked like doing things and just went about my business. I put her into the take pen with the sheep, didn’t care how it looked, let her bring them out, didn’t look to see what was happening behind me and closed the gate. Rippa had gone out, collected them, and brought them to me. No cheap shots.

I walked out to the alley-way across Stephanie’s field, opened that gate, walked the sheep through, when they tried to run, Rippa stopped them, held them . . .

And then we worked on just getting out in tight quarters a bit, and every time I said “No” she would back off.

We opened the gate to the bigger field, did some fetching (heeding John’s advice that I just do fetching until my shoes wear out) and worked on “out” and outruns, then put them through another fence with a HUGE draw to a gate, and the Rippa bear caught them, brought them back. I walked toward the gate while Rippa went to head and then behind and head, behind, then figured out where to be to hold them along with me and stayed there.

Ladies and gentlemen, there she was. That was it.

No cheap shots, no handling by me . . . Rippa just taking care of business and being cool about it. I understood what Maxine said about kicking her out and letting her get control now. She can do it, and so can I. I get it. For some reason I just didn’t.

Don’t believe me? Here’s a little clip I made to show friends what the heck I do.

Pretty nice, yeah?

When it came to cattle – I had been thinking long and hard about this because I thought I had handled well at the trial and then didn’t qualify because of control points. People ALWAYS think that Rippa is stubborn but time and time she proves me right that she’s more of a thinking dog. If she doesn’t get something, she gets sullen and will quit working hard until she figures it out. It can be frustrating and easy to judge, but I specifically wanted more thinking when I picked her site to breed to the Fury who is like, “GO HARD ALL THE TIME!” and sometimes can’t think because she’s too committed to just doing something.

With Shannon and Dustin, we’d been working on responsiveness and tweaking. Putting her in the right place and getting the job done. And that’s what I did at the trial mostly (not all of it was pretty, as I said). But now I think I understand where the BC/Aussie difference is. Rippa doesn’t need to be put somewhere, she just needs to understand the job. So, I told Shan when I came back that I would rather just work on fundamentals because she clearly felt out of control during the trial. I needed to stop telling her what to do and let her “feel” her stock out like she was doing with the sheep (and ducks).

What we have been working on is outruns and fetching.

The Woods have two places for cattle to go in their backyard. One is a smallish arena with obstacles set up and then there’s this “L” shaped alley way that’s wider up top and on a hill.  Shannon and I work on her outruns up there. It’s a little annoying sometimes because the cows will go down the leg of the L we don’t want them to if the pressure’s not right, but the exercise is neat and it works.

Here’s the setup:

Cows                       Me                                               Shannon                Rippa

Shannon generally has to place Rippa because her pressure is sometimes too much for the dog. Boss lady intimidates her. So what we do is lay her down, and both of us post up by the fence line but letting Rippa still see the cows (not blocking her view).

And then:

So, we send Rippa away (Shannon says it), and then walks toward the other fenceline to keep her out. When/if she cuts in, I am then there to walk forward to kick her out and then she’s nice and out when she comes into the cows. Then we fetch backward.

It’s working really well, but the fetching needs a lot of work. We moved to the arena and the job changed from just this exercise to navigating around the obstacles and just much harder so Rippa got slower and crankier and wanted to quit. We got her to do some stuff and left it. I get really frustrated with that, but I also think with time she’ll get it so I need to stop judging one go like that. She just doesn’t feel in control on cattle yet, and I was taking what control she did have away by worrying more about her obedience.

So anyway, that’s where we’re at. Pretty happy. Definitely planning on entering the next trial – even though I thought I wanted more mileage. I think this time I understand it.

I thanked Stephanie today for having faith in me and letting me make all these mistakes so I could eventually figure it out. It takes a brave, trusting woman to let my dog take cheap shots on her sheep and know that it will come out okay eventually.

When I get my own stock someday, I’m definitely going to remember the value of working stock away from a watchful eye and trusting people to figure it out on their own. I’m also just SO grateful to the people that made sure that Rippa’s ancestors had all the instinct they needed. Being able to sit back and let her work and make the right decisions is so key in MY development and if she were missing something somewhere, I couldn’t be in this phase of learning.

Shut up and Rippa is not a border collie

At the end of my session yesterday, Dustin asked me what I’d learned, and I told him, “Shut up and Rippa is not a border collie.” Hence the title. (I think I told him that.)

Last week we took a break because she’s been acting kind of weird and wanting to quit, which I attribute to coming into heat. She is out of it now that I can tell but still a little sucky-uppy so when I went to sheep and ducks this week, I kept our sessions short. Watching her work the ducks, it occurred to me that her outruns aren’t actually bad anymore. She goes at it with appropriate speed – but still a lot straighter than a pretty arc to lift them. But it still works. Whatever she’s doing doesn’t affect the stock until she gets closer and she’s still controlling bringing them to me as if she were making pretty arcs.

Working sheep, I tried it again – we were fetching across the entire field (it’s got to be a two-acre field) and she would start out with her shoulder wide, but then turn in and go straight. But instead of making the sheep move off, they still sat there until she got close enough to get behind them and fetch them. My thought is this: she’s learned how to read her sheep (these sheep are pretty light, too), and she isn’t wasting energy on pretty arcs if she doesn’t need to. I think I’ve done a decent job showing her what I want with flanks and she’s taking over the job now.

It does NOT look like what Shannon and Dustin’s dogs do in a number of ways:

1 – it’s not that fast. She goes in at a walk or trot to do it, so that’s probably why she doesn’t need to arc.

2 – She’s not “snappy” or “precise” like how their dogs and Fury works. She responds, but she does it in time and she’s loose eyed enough that you don’t even know if she’s really trying to do anything or not, but it happens.  She’s less interested in responding to me than to just getting the job done (and I will tell you, I make a lot of bad calls on commands and I talk a lot).

3 – the super big arc out of contact with the stock isn’t there, but, like I said, that might be directly related to #1.

Basically, what it looks like to me is that as Rippa gets more experience with the stock and she feels less adrenaline about the job, she’s slowing down and thinking and she’s understanding what she’s supposed to do and doing it.

We tried, on sheep, to get a batch of them out of the field and into the round pen so I could work on Fury’s issues, but it wasn’t happening. The sheep were just too boogered. They seem a lot more flighty than they used to be, maybe because there are more and even when I sort out my faithful ones, they’re a little sour to things or feeding off the herd mentality which is lighter. It was a new chore for Rippa so she didn’t really ‘get it’ and I feel like it’ll take time for her to take over that job confidently. Nice thing, though, is I know how sheep work enough to know that taking on that task when Stephanie wasn’t around would be fine. They weren’t going to get lost if we failed. Sheep magnetize to what they know like all herd animals, so if they ran away, I was sure to find them by a pen somewhere and they were happy to run home when I gave up.

I pulled out Booger Ram (I’m sure Steph has a name for him) to work with the heavy sheep and while I was working Fury he was getting impatient with her tendency to dive bomb and started fighting rather than moving. Fury was worried less about him than the light sheep trying to escape so she never had to fight him (I don’t really want her too, since she’s 11 1/2 and I would like to keep her injury free and her remaining teeth in her head), but that meant Rippa got another work.

Booger Ram tried it on Rippa again and she was awesome. Calm walk up again, waiting for me to tell her what to do while he stamped at her, and when I said, “Hit him!” she was like, “you betcha!” Great direct hits on the poll, commitment, and then backing off like he needed to get the point. Here’s a photo after her work, knowing she’s a stud now.

I think working ducks really helped with that stuff. Both Fury and Rippa are more apt to back up on stock (ducks or sheep or cows) than they were because the ducks don’t just run faster if you put more pressure on them: they stop. There were times that the sheep would stop because they’d had enough of running, and both dogs backed up until the sheep moved again. Useful stuff, that!

Yesterday, Dustin started me out on  a new flock of goats and I told him I think I yell at Rippa too much because she’s doing the job even if it’s not how I want it to look and he agreed, so I tried really hard not to do anything but handle with body language. We had to put a line on her because the goats didn’t want to flock and they were REALLY exciting, which then brought down her excitement and by the end she was working slow and methodical and teaching them to fetch to me. It was awesome.

We went up to cows in the obstacle pen and she went and got them off the hill for me without any trouble, but I put the line back on her and she kind of lost her interest in it. I don’t know if it’s from last session when Dustin popped her on a line and she screamed and is now not so sure about whether or not she trusts him or what but she wasn’t really super awesome. Holes. It’s cool. She’ll come back. Good stuff everywhere else.

So, shut up, and your dog’s not a border collie. I finally get what that last bit means and why you have to be careful about border collie trainers. They probably also want your dog to work like a border collie. Dustin and Shannon are awesome about letting my dog be my dog and working her for what she is, not what they want, etc. I think it’s really building an all around stockdog.

And all of these different experiences on stock and the kinds of advances we’re making is really showing me how little you can tell about a dog if all it does is train for trialing. A real useful ranch hand or chore dog needs experience to get it down and not every dog has all the heart and go juice to back up the experience.  It’s one thing to take stock around an arena in under 15 minutes, and it’s another thing to work all day on stock that doesn’t know what the program is.

Super grateful to how things are working out. I’d say Kathy retiring has actually been one of the best things to happen to me in my stockdog career (after getting my foundation learning from Kathy) because I was so dependent on the experiences she was providing (and so dependent on doing what she said rather than feeling it and learning it myself) that I wouldn’t have had all of the ones I’m having now.

I’m not sure if I’ll be able to trial this fall because my schedule is insane, but I don’t really care. I’m putting in the time to learn all this and it’ll pay off with really knowing my dog and knowing what to look for in a stud if I decide to breed her because I’ve got the whole picture of what she is and whether she’s what I want to see for my goals.

Anywho, it’s cool.

It is starting to come together!

Remember how I said I needed to work on outruns and take pens? Hmm.

So, following yesterday’s cattle runs, I took Rippa and Fury out to Stephanie’s for sheep this morning. I was SO tired. It was a late night accidentally and I could barely keep my eyes open. Perhaps that has to do with it.

When I got Rippa going, on new sheep, nonetheless (not our usual heavy ones – we usually have a rough go of it when I take CA along – which I did today - because my heavy sheep are occupied), things were pretty much close to perfect.

I decided to work on her outruns, but found that she was naturally turning her shoulder out and going out wide without me asking. If she turned in too much, I just had to lay her down and ask again and she’d go further out. If she was going too fast, I just had to ask her to be “easy” and she’s slow to a trot. There was not a single out of control moment. I was doing outruns from 50 meters away and I never do that.

When we did fetching, she balanced up super good and if she got too close, it just took a “no” for her to get out. The sheep actually lined out instead of bunching up because she was chilling out enough to let them naturally cruise along.

I credit this monumental leap in training to Shannon and Dustin (though mostly Shannon lately). They’ve been having me put a little more obedience on her – and ask for more than I usually would – when I work with them. The day before, Rippa was worried about going to a cow on the fence and buzzing, so we had to lay her down before she got close enough to really get in a mess and since the stakes were higher with the cattle, she was down with that. I think that she found that taking my commands kept her safe and helped her be calm and she carried that forward with the sheep today.

The balancing up on the fetch I also totally credit to a method she taught me where you lay the dog down and walk ahead of the sheep, letting them drift and not letting the dog get up until they need to get up because the sheep aren’t feeling the pressure. No commands, you just lay the dog back down if they get up too soon. Otherwise, the dog is allowed to get up and work, and as they start moving faster you slow them down with either a down or an “steady” and if they take it, work continues.

I’m trying it with Fury, who has had a very hard time balancing the sheep because of bad experiences. She works ducks and cattle fine (no, my 11 year old dog isn’t on cattle anymore), but sheep is issues because of my bad handling in the past. Once she gets that relaxation thing and the game, it should go well, too. Pretty neat.

The other thing we “worked” on was take pens. I don’t have a really good take pen setup at any place. The ducks have a full trial setup now, but it’s hard to practice take pen skills on ducks because the are different from other stock and the take pen is so small. That said, we have inadvertantly been doing that because the ducks like to mash in the corner where the door to their enclosure is, so both dogs have learned to be patient and how to get them out of that corner.

Rippa’s been doing pen work via sorting her sheep out at Stephanie’s but it’s a smaller, weirder setup than what you’ll find at a trial. I figured it was good enough to try it today, so I did.

The first go, the sheep got packed into the back of the pen (it’s not square, more like wide on one side and narrow on the other) and Rippa couldn’t get enough space to get around them. Instead of telling her what to do, I let her sort it out. The sheep would stamp at her, and after trying a couple things, she went outside the pen, got into a bow and gave them ugly face and a little bark and they made space. When I got her back in the pen, they came out and she was nose-to-sheep leg, calmly waiting for them to file out. We did it three times before I was satisfied we had that dialed and. . . that was that.

Sometimes I feel like I’ll never get there – so much power and drive and so little perfection on my part and then my dog goes and shows me she’s getting it. It’s one day and she will likely get worse before she gets consistent, but it’s in there. We got this.

Psyched!

Going to work ducks tomorrow and sell my obnoxious call duck and one runner that just refuses to work. Next week we are off – the huz and I are going to do some epic canyoneering and climbing in Yosemite. Give the dogs plenty of time to think about this awesome week.

Starting to Think I’m Getting Close to Ready!

Shannon and Dustin Wood with their mentor, Merle Newton of Crystal Rose Cowdog College. I wish I could have gotten Sandy in the shot, too, but she seemed to hang back the entire time and never give me photogenics.

So where did this photo come from? This week I took hump day off and audited a Curt Pate cattle handling clinic at their suggestion (notes in the link).

One of my first thoughts was, “Crap, man, I don’t even know how to ride horses that nice. I’m going to mess them up.” Mainly because Dustin says they’ll put me on his horse come this fall when I go trial with them and I’m used to lesson horses. It’s going to be a WHOLE OTHER ball of wax compared to ASCA trials where the goal is for you to just sit at one end of the arena and command the dog. I mean, yipe!

They both assure me it’s way easy once I get the hang of it and they’ll get me practiced up when the time comes. I don’t know if they assume I’m an ace-rider or not, but I hope they assume not and it’s that easy. I’ve just started riding again after 15 years off . . . and I was doing hunter-jumper stuff primarily then, definitely not cattle work. (Though I did totally go to a camp when I was a kid to do just that.)

I’m way into the whole cattle horse thing now, too. That’s a whole other ball of wax compared to trail riding or doing some jumps. It looks like Western-style dressage, and with an end purpose to it.

Anyway . . . lots of thoughts rolling around in my head.

I got a chance to rent sheep this week and work ducks, and go to cattle with the Woods.

Sheep – sheep went really well. I tried this technique Shannon had me practice last time where I lay down Rippa and walk out ahead of the sheep and she needs to stay put while they drift with me. When they stop, she’s allowed to get up. It took  a few minutes to establish the rules, but it really got her minding the sheep and me well, compared to the constant “out out out” pushing I had to do. We were doing it all over Stephanie’s field, fencelines and not, and she didn’t break once. She’s getting more and more self assured – but still takes a bit to get the confidence to work out further from me. That’s okay. Baby steps. We’re still only just starting out.

Ducks went super nice, too. Now that Rippa gets the point, it’s almost automatic from the pulling them out of their housing to the take pen, then putting them out to the take pen, and put thing them through the obstacles. I only just introduced the chute and Rippa was like, “OMG, this is a take pen. I go to the top and hold them, right?” We’re working on that. I also don’t really have much experience with obstacles because Kathy likes to lay down the foundation without that stuff. So, I’m working out the best way to navigate them and where to put Rippa for clean runs.

Cattle went really well. We warmed up on goats and sheep and she was super good. She’s still a lot more power than I want for them – it’s so hard for her to just dial it back a bit, but I’d rather have power than not. I can control it, but it’s never just a casual stroll to start out.  Shannon put us out back with the obstacles this time and said I should fetch the cattle to the arena and then pick an obstacle. Which, I did. We put them in the take pen. Some of it was ugly, some of it was great, but the ugly stuff wasn’t Rippa’s work, it was just that she’s not precise on the commands and neither am I.

So that’s my job from here on out – stop working on being relaxed now and start demanding excellence from Rippa. I feel like my cattle handling’s weak still, but Shannon agrees that I should work on Rippa first ,because once I can relax that she’ll take all my commands when I give them, then I can work on me. She’s not bad. She just takes too many steps and tends to want to test me. Shannon stopped me and told me I needed to give stronger corrections, and when we went to start the next round, things changed even before I did. Rippa must have sensed I meant business, and it was NICE. She was thinking and she was obeying.

So, precision. I still don’t love her outruns yet. Just gotta do it a million times. Outruns can set the tone for the whole thing so I need to get it down. It’s really the weakest part of the link, and I think its because Fury was SO easy to teach in comparison that I didn’t have to work as hard as I do with Rips.

We also need to figure out how to do formal take pens. Rippa is good at chore take pens, but she doesn’t know how to do a little trial one –  the last thing I want is a “thank you” at the start. Nobody has a formal setup to practice that so I may have to travel when I get close to trial time and practice it somewhere else. That’s good for me, too.

All in all, I’m pretty psyched. It’s coming together and my confidence in myself and my dog is beginning to climb. I just might be ready for this trial stuff soon.

Notes from the Kathy Warren Clinic

I’m tempted to write my own thoughts from this week and the last few works, but I’ll never get this down if I do that.

Going to this clinic was sort of like going to lessons with her with mostly fresh eyes. Rather than having an ongoing weekly visit, I don’t think Kathy has seen Rippa and I together for over a year. I am so used to working on my own now that taking the clinic made me see the best use for it in a different way. I used to go to classes and really pay attention to everything, but after a while you look, you don’t focus, and you just do what she tells you. This round – knowing that this was a limited time thing to get her opinions and thoughts – I brought the notebook and tried to watch every dog work, asking questions as much as I could. Moreover, I paid more attention to the advanced dogs workings, as I’m about where I left off with Fury when we stopped training her consistently.

Because of this, and because I don’t have a better way to do it – I’m going to lump the different thoughts into categories. You can read them all, or you can look for what suits you best.

These are my notes – some things are direct from Kathy, but assume it’s my memory of them, not necessarily what she is actually saying. I don’t do that kind of skilled transcription.

General Thoughts

• If you raise your dog right, and don’t spoil them, they’ll work better for you. This means that kenneling them and not living with them, letting them be in your bed, etc is part of that. Obviously you have to make concessions based on what you want the dog for (a friend or a working dog), but it’s much easier to train if you have that kind of relationship.
• Do not trial until you do what you do at home in a trial (I had a terrible first work because I didn’t just start how I do at Stephanie’s or the Woods, or even on my ducks – I tried to do something else). That means, if you’re expected to pick stock up a certain way to start – you better be able to do that, without much thought.
• When training – ask your dog for something, back it up, then test to see if they need the backup the second time. If they do, it’s time to go back to basics until you can test and get consistent success.
• Doing the kind of things you want your dog to do with just you and the stock is helpful – if you don’t know where to place yourself, how will you know where to place the dog? (I think this is something I really appreciate from being able to work without anyone watching – I’m really getting this part down because I have no help.)
• Something I really appreciate about Kathy’s “culture” during lessons – you pretty much aren’t allowed to tell students what you think because Kathy controls those conversations. It cuts down on ignorant yapping and cross talk. I have had problems with this going to other people for lessons – I want to hear from the person I’m taking instruction from only. My temperament does not handle multiple opinions at once. I find most of those opinions aren’t that valid, either – you need to look at what you want from who you want to figure out where to take it.
• When working dogs, don’t have a lot of stops if you can help it – flow makes it all a lot easier.  It creates bad working habits and doggy emotions. (I’ve been asking for a lot of stops because I want that control. Oops.)
• Be aware of what you look like to strange stock. (I was wearing a skirt during one of the works and the sheep did NOT like it.)
• If you’re running backward, you’re doing it wrong. The dog should be giving pressure.
• People seemed to be letting their dogs get up too fast after handlers hit them with a “stay.” Make the dogs stay for at least 5 seconds if you do it or they’ll cheat you.
• Over exaggerate everything and you’ll have more consistent results and better trialing because it will degrade under stress or relaxation.
• Keep the stick low when you use it – make sure that the dog and sheep, which are two foot high, can see it; it’s not for you.
• If you’re going to be keeping a flock or herd, remember to keep light, medium, and advanced sets – especially if you give lessons. Heavy and extremely light sheep can work, but if you’ve got an intermediate dog that needs something in between, you’re in trouble, and mixing heavy and light will just make really frustrating work as one stays and one leaves.
• Light sheep just need a ton of space – half an arena at times. You have to work to get a dog’s confidence to allow that to happen.
• WATCH YOUR STOCK – more than the dog, even, if you can. You’re leaning, you’re getting bad timing, and you’re asking for the wrong things because you are not watching your stock.
• Don’t cheat yourself – work on fixing what’s not right before you move on to new challenges. It’s okay to go backward, too.
• Don’t let your “down” erode into a stay if you can help it. Use different commands.
• Some dogs need boots for the clinics – these are usually the ones that live on urban footing – carpet, concrete, grass. It’s the dry, hard ground that gets them because they aren’t calloused up enough.
• The “Steady” command can only be given if the dog has time to slow down and steady. Don’t give it if it has to slow down and stop (or turn to get out) unless you’re training it.
• A good way to learn whistles? Record yourself making the sounds and then practice along. Make up your own sounds.
• Duck management – keep pools and food out in the working area so it’s fun to go out to.
• Proof your dog a lot on the obedience stuff – if “stay” really means stay, they won’t move even if they’re getting stepped on. But then let them think when you’re working or you can get into trouble with that.
• Outruns: I’ve been crutching on keeping Rippa close so I can have her turn her shoulder and run around. Keep her far away and stay close to the sheep – if she doesn’t turn her shoulder when you ask for it, you have plenty of time to get to her to correct it until she does.

Starting Young Dogs

• When you first start a keen dog – you’re really only worried about keeping them off the stock and learning “out” and how to work the flight zone. If the dog learns to balance him/herself with you and the stock from the get go – that’s all you want. Don’t ask for fetching or being perfect on both sides until they understand to stay off the stock. (After watching a dog this week, though, I wonder what happens if you have a sticky dog – no sticky dogs between the BCs and Aussies this weekend.)
• Watch the head of your dog – they’ll hold it higher when they’re not thinking “biting” thoughts. They will lower it when they go in for a challenge – be there as soon as you see it. You want to keep the dog thinking “calm” thoughts.
• Teaching flanks is easy – just label it when it happens. It’s the square corners and the “out” that are hard. People get excited about the flank commands and don’t spend enough time on the hard stuff.
• Read the dog’s personality – be ready to deal with bad habits and instincts so it doesn’t let it start. If the dog is wild-minded, work at keeping them calm. If they are sticky, move a lot. Etc. Whatever is in there to start will be in there later, so better not to let it come out until it’s controllable by the dog’s intellect and handler’s skill.

Driving Tips:

• Don’t start driving until you can have the sheep parked in front of the handler. Get that “there” command by walking backward with the dog at the top when you give it.
• Handy drawing – I wasn’t doing it right so Kathy physically made me work her like a dog with the stick until I got the body english right. Here’s my notes on that.
• 
• STAY OUT OF THE DOG’S WAY. People have trouble with this – I feel like I don’t, but I probably do.  Plan the draw of the sheep when you give your flanks and “there.” Turn and go with the dog to hold them out. All you need to start is following with you getting out of the way and stopping them when they get to head (either a stop or a fetch flank command)
• Handy picture:
• To start, you’ll be close to the stock as in #2, but when you stick a stick out, the dog has to go around you and you have to change directions a lot to get the dog and you used to driving.
• As you get more advanced, you’ll want to be ahead of the dog’s path, out of the influence of the sheep, and when you stick the stick out, the dog has space to get the flank and stay driving (as in #1)
• If you’re too close, you’ll just feed sheep or force a fetch (as in #3)
• On the drive, you want to stay in front of the dog and out of the way of the sheep’s flight zone so you can fix the outside flank. Logic makes me think you should be behind the dog, but being in front of the dog allows you to draw him to you and then give a “there” rather than the dog do an outrun around you. (see figures 2 and 3)
• If there’s a lean to your dog, fix with a short flank command.
• The next steps are the following – with Kathy’s classic drawings:
1. Verbally, without body english or stick work, get the dog to balance up with a flight zone around the sheep for you and her.
2. Start a drive, but only expect about two steps, then end it with a stop or a flank fetch command.
3. Now it’s time to stop the lean  of the dog (who wants to go to head) with flank commands by watching where you go and helping the dog get it.
4. To start, there will be big flanks that start and stop the drive until the dog fixes herself with no flank commands.

More Advanced Stuff:

• Even if it looks nice, never let the dog cheat the fence line on a take pen.
• As dogs get more advanced, “Out” means “Just relieve pressure” and you let the dog make the call how (turning out of flight zone, slowing down, which direction to turn, etc)
• “There” should literally mean “bring her to the hole in front of you, not to me, wherever I am.” I wonder if it’s helpful to practice using the command with gates and panels to help the dog understand the point of that.
• Teaching shedding
• Start with a person doing the shedding and just let the dog hold the sheep on their end, like a wall, the fine tuning comes from the person.
• Two steps is all it should take to create the division, then call the dog to you. Then let the dog put pressure on them to separate them, but it will fry their brains to let them do that. Have them hold only one group, but do it nicely.
• It’s tempting to drill the heck out of advanced dogs and fine tune them, but remember that you also need to work on things to relax them or that fine tuning will amp them up – do NOT over train. if your dog is doing great, let it be fun! Think of advanced training as times tables. It starts to REALLY suck if you keep forcing the issue.

Getting to the fun training (at least for me)

Didn’t have cattle this week, which was okay, but slightly disappointing, because after watching the video, I want another go at it. And I will have it next week . . . so no whining, right? Opportunities abound.

It’s been a fun ag week for me. The husband and I went out to pick out our replacement hens – this year I just went for the prettiest ones because me going for good layers hasn’t worked out so well (one died, one went broody, and two quit laying).

Here are the little guys:

Today I took the girls out to Stephanie’s to work on stuff. I have my Kathy Warren clinic weekend next weekend (and I will bring both dogs since the huz is away working during that same time period) and there’s some goals I have before I show up: improve that outrun, and get Rippa ready to learn to drive with her. I haven’t gotten this far with Fury so I think having Kathy teach me to do it would be the best use of this clinic.

Here’s the things I think I need to be able to do for Kathy to do it:

1. Be able to pull your dog off the top and circle off-balance without affecting the sheep. Check (mostly – sometimes she’s a little tight and they drift, but nothing big).

2. Be able to down your dog at anywhere around that off-balance circle. Check (mostly – Rippa isn’t an instant downer, she’ll take a couple steps before she stops).

So this lesson was making sure I had that part down. We used a small flock (only 3 sheep) and worked on Rippa’s obedience in taking the down and getting out.

I’m sensitive that she gets pretty bored with this kind of training so we did some fetching, and then I worked on that outrun. She still obviously doesn’t “get” that she should stay out to gather them if I’m not there to help her – and taking people’s advice, I have started to obedience it a bit. It’s funny, because people generally when they tell me to do this say that I’m teaching the dog to think rather than use obedience, but I’d say using commands is obedience. Relative perspective?

I took a video of me doing this. You’ll notice two things: 1 – I don’t yell NEARLY like I used to. I love being calm and happy. Stockdogging is zen! 2 – Snuffly me – a combination of having a cold and having allergies made me the sick kid. Sorry for all that sniffle.

It was a nice, quiet stockdog day. Toward the end, to make things interesting, I worked on penning and Stephanie’s chute-panel. We need more work there. Rippa has no idea whether to follow them through the chute (which makes them panic and her lose control) or to stay on the outside and hold them. The answer is neither. We’ll figure it out.

We  got in her really tight sorting pen today to move sheep out for Fury and I was really impressed. She didn’t take any pot shots, hit legs gently to move them, and generally the sheep stayed super calm. Fun times.

And then it was Fury’s turn. As I said, I don’t expect a lot from her right now. She hasn’t worked in like five years. She takes her flanks and downs and it’s just time to teach her how to balance to me gently and kindly. I had to video this because the way these two dogs work are night and day.

Rippa is upright upright upright and tight working. Fury has more eye and wider working. You can guess which dog the border collie person likes. I think Rippa works more like her dad, but the more I do this, the more I appreciate Fury’s natural style, too. I hope it’s in Rippa somewhere because it would be nice to have a blend of the two in future generations.

There’s not much to the video, I’m sorry, but I was just really happy at how calm everything is, even with Fury bear. I’m again so blessed to be able to try training her again after everything else. So blessed for that foundation and blessed that my eleven year old dog has plenty of go-juice left.

The time honored dip-in-a-stock-tank tradition.

And then we headed out to visit the ducks at the Best Family Farm. Jennifer has been so cool about them – she takes them out to leg them up for me, I left her my stock flag, and they pop pretty easily out of their pen and into the field now without a lot of work. One of them has a messed up foot, but it’s easy to sort her/him out and leave it behind to work the others.

I decided that they could handle some short works with Rippa and so, I did. She did quite awesome – taking her commands to stay off them and drive them, fetching them thoughtfully . . .

But then when she gets too close she gets all kinda panicked about why they don’t move off her and starts kind of nipping on them trying to stop them. It’s okay. With time she’ll learn to take the pressure off. V, Jennifer’s daughter, wanted to see what their dog did (he’s half BC/half lab) so after a 20 minute ducky break in their posh duck waterfall:

I let Obi give it a go. He’s funny. His border collie sense is like, “Go to head and stop.” He’s fabulous at that. I worked at getting him unstuck but there’s not a lot clicking for him yet. I have a feeling in time, he’ll be kinda fun to work on the ducks, but definitely missing a couple instinctual pieces that I’ll need to help him with.

But yeah, le sigh, very good stockdoggy day.

Oh, and I finally figured out how to podcast today. I’ll be posting interviews from breed greats in the future, but for now, the first one’s mostly about me.

Second lesson on cattle at the Woods’

This afternoon, I loaded Rippa up and we paid Shannon and Dustin Wood’s little spread in Atascadero, pretty much on the same road I use to get to Stephanie’s sheep rentals, just the opposite direction. Highway 41 is the big win in stockdog land.

I’m still feeling out how to approach the Woods’ lessons. They’re pretty open to me just doing my thing, but also super psyched to help me out and I’m trying to learn when to do my thing and when to take their advice – my thought is generally to listen to what they have to say, give it a try a couple times and I or the dog aren’t getting it, to go to what we know and ponder it. I think it’s working.

For example, Dustin had just built a round pen on his property (a dang fine one, by the way – post-holes dug and strung tight) and he says since they put it up, they’ve been using it every day. They like to warm their dogs up on it with their goats before putting them on cattle, and work on fundamentals.

Rippa and I haven’t been in a round pen in forever because of how Stephanie’s set up is, so we gave it a go, trying some outrun training handling advice but not getting so far so I went back to what she and I know well.  Basically, again, is that the message is, is that I’ve been lazy.

With Fury, who naturally took her outruns pretty easy from what I remember, I never really had to worry about the finesse of starting them (for example, laying them down with their shoulder to the stock so they’re facing the way you want them to run), and so with Rippa, who I had had so much trouble starting in the first place, I have been letting just laydown facing them. No more. The Woods got on me about consistently asking for it and it would come. Good. Thing #1 to work on. Okay.

I should also note that working with them, with their dogs, I feel like the laziest trainer ever – their dogs take commands. Rippa takes the suggestion and I have to handle her harder. Partly, Rippa’s never been fast on the response during stock and I was happy to get what I got, and partly I am being lazy. There’s no reason I can’t get the same level of obedience out of her at this point, so I need to start working on my expectations of her trained behaviors. She’ll take ten feet to down, five feet to stop, and a while to “get back” or take her flanks. I need it now and I need to remember to make sure I get it now. It will help her outruns, too, if I an get her to stop and take her flanks. Thing #2 to work on.

Shannon talks to me about how I really need to train Rippa to respect the stick. She shows me with her own dog on a leash how if she points the stick at her dog (off stock), she’ll immediately turn her shoulder and try to get out of her space. I take the stick and poke at my dog, who looks inquisitively. We laugh. This is a really big point to me because when I worked both my dogs, I saw the stick as the enforcer and direction giver, and both Stephanie and the Woods see it as a little something more. I’m not sure I’ve seen Kathy Warren do the kind of stick ground work my BC people have suggested, but I may just not have been “seeing it” back when I was regularly taking lessons. Either way, thing #3 to work on.

We then moved into the cattle. They’d recently lost one of their Holstein heifers so picked up some replacement beef calves at the sale. Dustin said they hadn’t really been worked or dog broke yet so if we had to separate them out, he would. Well, no worries there. Rippa went right to them this time and got to work and they stayed just fine with the dairy cattle, with one red heifer seeming to always get herself out and chased back in – but I’d also say that she was also doing that because Rippa was too tight and pushing her out to start.

I started Rippa by just having her walk up their heels to keep her easy and cranked down (because Rippa is PSYCHED to actually WORK CATTLE) and once she started lifting them off the fence, we started the real training. The Woods’ have a lot of panels set up in their arena for finite obstacle work and to use to help teach the dogs to work in that kind of pressure, so I was able to use the panel to send Rippa out wider than I could without them. Once she figured that trick out, we had things pretty much dialed to lift them and fetch them to me. 

Despite me starting her at the heels, Shannon observed that I should send her to the heads, and so I did, pushing her back after they turned. The one time I didn’t was the one time the fetch didn’t work out, so I learned a really good lesson there for my dog – despite her early starts being more heel work, she’s got big head instinct and to let her use that to feel in control.

The other thing that the Woods taught me was something I definitely wouldn’t have thought about . . . what happens when your group divides? In the beginning and occasionally toward the end of the lessons, one or two of the cattle would break off. This blows Rippa’s mind because she has a really strong sense of group but she’s also a bit insecure about working without me at a distance on the cattle (and I mentioned this is an issue on bigger distances with  the sheep, too). She doesn’t know whether to come into me with the lots of cattle or to go get the ones she wants to. So Dustin told me, hey, if she has a group handled, you go to the other one. Doing that makes her feel secure and she’ll think better and just bring the cattle over, which she did. In the same vein, if I have a group handled and one lone cow, if I want her to bring that cow to the group, just walk up to the cow without saying anything to her and she’ll go pick it up and then I can walk back to the group. Generally you want to follow the “bring the many to the one” rule I like to live by, but if you have a relatively easy straggler, man, that works so well.

Well, it works so well if your dog has the instinct and power to do it, which, hey, sparkle, mine does.

When we finished up, Dustin was very effusive about her, “She did really, really, really, good. That was really nice. By the end there she was getting them out of the corner, biting them where she should be, and 100% better than the first time in there today and way better than last time you were here.”
That means a lot coming from them, as they’ve got some very, very fine dogs and their handling is beautiful, quiet, and confident.

Rippa’s improvement is pretty in keeping with how it’s been with her. Once she gets it (or I do), she gets it pretty thoroughly. Having done what we did in there with half unbroke calves and only our second time on cattle in almost a year . . . I can confidently say we’d get through an ASCA started course, no problem. Maybe not get the highest score out there yet, but like her mother, she’s definitely more a cow dog. All that power and grip she wants to use on the sheep and goats stops being quite as stress-gratuitous on cattle and she settles down really easy and reads her stock.

No problems walking up on their heads if the cattle we standing, lifting out of corners patiently, lifting off of fence panels. It was pretty dang awesome.

And it looks like I have a standing weekly date with them if we’re both available. Can’t wait to learn more. Better get started on that ground work.

Goats and Cattle and Bar WD

Well, that didn’t take long. I’m a firm believer in the concept that things will come together when it’s time for them to come together (though I do let myself get disappointed when it’s not on my timeline), and this week has been an example of just that.

Once I decided to go for it, I talked to Jennifer, and ducks have been ordered. The huz and I are trucking out to Creston to build out the duck living area tomorrow, and in a few days the ducklings should arrive and be ready to raised by Jennifer’s teenage daughters.

In the same day, I asked my husband to ask his acquaintance about cattle, but it didn’t work out so he asked a mutual friend of ours that grew up on a cattle ranch here if he had any leads and . . . of course he did!

We went up the grade to north county today to do some agility warming up (the owner there, Eileen, is kind enough to let me work my dogs in her field without taking lessons  - we saw her there and she razzed me for my tendency to only train the weekend before a trial – this time it’s three weeks away so I’m doing good!)

And then, we headed a few minutes out to meet Shannon and Dustin Wood of Bar WD. I didn’t know much what to expect except that she was in a couple Facebook groups other dog people I knew were in . . . but let me just say that I was impressed.

The Woods run cattle out of Parkfield, an area more in the central valley, but they have a training setup in town. Sheep, goats, and cattle. Eileen said she’d heard they had puppies, so one of the first things I said was, “I hear you have puppies!” and was ushered in. Eeeeeeeeeee. I like puppies, what can I say?

The Woods were happy to just let me do my thing, encouraging me to try goats first, but I took a cue from Kathy on this and asked them to work their dogs first so I could see what they expected. This works really well because I get an idea of their expectations, where they are coming from with their dogs and handling, and whether I’m getting into trouble.  It also helps me figure out if they’re going to be cool with the power I’ve got on the dog with grip and such or just know if I’m in a situation I shouldn’t be. But nope, this was more than fine: it appears to be perfect.

The Woods dogs are NICE. A couple of them fetched a big purse at the Red Bluff stock sale auction ($5000 and another at $10000). And, they’re all red dogs. I laughed because Stephanie told me that the BC people who trial on sheep all think red dogs can’t work. He was like, “Show her a picture of my dogs!” I agree. Being biased and all . . .

Moreover the Woods “get it” from a stockhandling perspective. Low stress, efficient, replace the work of ten men with one dog doing good work. “I don’t need dogs that bark because my dogs will just bring them back to me – I don’t care where they were, but they got here, so what do I need barking for?” Dustin had me watch the cattle closely, and as he said, “Watch the beginning, not the end.” See the beginning of movement of both dog and cattle and I’d respond faster and be more effective. And I totally, totally get it. I’m also glad to be working with somebody that’s not just trialing as a hobby – I really want to make practical use out of my dogs (and recognize it if I can’t get that for any reason) so staying with people who do it will help me keep that perspective.

It came our turn to do it and Rippa has never worked goats in her life and she LOVED them. Way too amped to do much thinking and I tried to wait her out with half moons, but she was ready to MOVE THOSE GOATS by all her power. Eventually I called her off and we moved to the cattle. Shannon quips, “They work like cattle, right?” I didn’t really feel that – like light sheep/lambs, but I think Rippa did. The enthusiasm was sky high compared to the sheep.

They have a couple Holstein calves, which he said he likes because they are better for working – the meat cattle will just sit (I think is what he said). I know a lot of people who don’t like dairy cattle because they aren’t as gregarious (don’t group) because of how they’re raised, but I did like them when I trialed them in Idaho, so to each his own. I’d be more interested to learn about cattle breeds and stockdogs – it seems I know enough about sheep, and even ducks, but not cattle.

I started Rippa like I have been taught to do at Kathy’s, just seeing what she does and trying to keep it easy and keep myself out of it and Rippa definitely dropped any semblance of hesitation about cattle – heads, heels, it was all good to her. Dustin and Shannon called  me in and asked me to put some more control on it and push her back like I did at Betty’s and in no time she was driving them up and down the fence line and turning them quietly. I was very proud of her for taking her flanks and commands like a champ.

When we tried to lift them off the fence, however, she got less confident and started trying to do stuff on the inside flank.  She doesn’t do a real good job of staying back on the fetch, instead over flanking and coming to the cow’s head and getting it mucked up and scary for the cows – not releasing enough pressure. I’m not worried about it  - Rippa spends most of her life EXTREMELY EXCITED by the sight of cattle but unable to work them (we do a lot of off leash hikes and rides in the hills here) so her brain probably freaks when she’s finally allowed to do stuff and wants to just turn them in circles for the sheer adrenaline of it. I’m sure it will settle with time.

Dustin had me handle the cattle myself and start reading the cows rather than worrying about the dog. Simple stuff, stuff I know intellectually but not instinctually. I spend a lot more time worrying about the dog on cattle, and that’s what made me a bad handler on sheep – worrying about the dog on sheep – so it should make sense, right?

Then he showed me a couple ways to get Rippa to not slice the top on her outrun on cattle – setting her up and using the panels to kick her out and balance at  the top. She did this a few times really nicely, a few times not. I wasn’t intending to do real work with her today – just see where we were at but I figured it was a good sign they were pressing me to improve and work her, so I was really happy with what we got.

He observed she’s got a side, for sure, “she’s left handed” (meaning she takes the go-by –clockwise- command better and will choose it, given the option). Kind of interesting because in early training I felt like she was the opposite. I used to have to urge the go by (if you remember that from a few months ago) . . . anyway, you fix that by just working the weak flank a little more, so we will.

When Rippa wouldn’t go to the outside flank against the fence (when she had plenty of room), I employed Betty’s method of me manually getting the cattle off the fence and then sending the dog – doing it once fixed that pretty well, so . . . tools in the toolbox!

All of that went pretty well and by the end we had pretty good control of the calves, enough to direct where we needed to go. The sheep training definitely helped her solidify “the point” compared to when we were at Betty’s.

Then he suggested we go back to the goats because she’s been drained of all that initial energy. Shannon showed me some stuff with her dog about how to train Rips – off stock – to move off the stick (something I don’t do but have thought about) and suggested we do some obedience off-stock work before we work to take the edge off (I agree, you’ll remember I did do this in earlier training days . . . I think I just got so lazy on my own).  And then she had me do some half-moons with Rippa, but this time really paying attention to my “out” and reinforcing it as a real command. Again, I definitely got lazy.

By the end there, we were working goats pretty well.

The Woods definitely have put the time in and understand it. Shannon says they’ve been at this five years only, but they’re quite successful, and as I said – I’m very, very impressed. I feel like a relationship with them is going to skyrocket my stock handling skills and goals. They go to all kinds of associations to trial as they figure being well rounded will make them have the best dogs and I love that. I’d never even considered other venues because I’m such an ASCA person, but that door just got flung wide open as a possibility.

I’m super grateful that everything appears to be working out. The Beez worked for like two hours without quitting, on different livestock, and I was quite proud of her. I saw some really good dogs work, too. And some really talented and knowledgeable handlers.

Just so much good rolling down the road – I’m really getting an education and so grateful to all these people for being willing to provide it.  There is a Jewish teaching that you should not learn from only one great scholar, but from many. Maybe not at all once, but over the period of your lifetime. I’m definitely feeling that happening now – there is so much out there to learn and I’m ready for it.

My huz was with me, and he’s been a casual observer of all this stuff for a long while – he timed Finals in Bakersfield and comes along periodically to clinics and lessons. At one point I asked him to video some and he said, “But then I can’t see what’s going on.” That’s a first – he actually cared. On the way home, he was actually excited, talking about how we’re going to go out there and kill it in trials now with the help of these two, what good trainers they were, how well the explained things, how well they handled, how awesome their dogs were, about their trucks, their nice setup, and just . . . I think he finally got it.

Yeah, feeling quite blessed and excited.

Video goodness and is it really time to trial?

So, today I had the husband in tow for training. I thought I was going to be on my own (no Stephanie, even) so it would be a good, mellow time for huz to learn to see what I need him to (stuff you’ll see in the video – handling things) and tell me I am doing that from time to time.

No such luck. Another gal was there with her two dogs, and Stephanie had been working one of hers when I arrived.

We really only have one set of lesson sheep right now as the others are lambs or lambing, so by the time I was up, the sheep had been worked at least three times. I was nervous about this because I don’t like overdoing it with them, and there was a baby lamb in there. Steph just told me to pull the lamb out if we had troubles.

The previous lesson person had left the sheep in the middle of the arena, so my usual system of “sort sheep into the arena and then get them set up” wasn’t in play.

Oh, side note . . . here’s the area I sort out of:

I think you should give me props for being able to use a young dog and have her go around that thing and set them up on the gate there in the far right and sort out three or four sheep out of twenty.

Let’s have it. Now.

Okay, THANK YOU.

Anyway, so they are there in the middle of the arena, and as I told you before, these sheep don’t like to stay put. Rippa doesn’t have a beautiful big, wide outrun on her, so I have a choice to just send her and let her get them her way or try to set up a nice outrun.

Stephanie and my husband were both there, along with someone I’ve known for years from working at Kathy’s. Which do you think I picked? The latter. Because I wanted to show that I was well behaved, not because it was best for us.

As good ol’ Norm Andrews would have said, “It should have worked!” But it didn’t. So ugly. Me chasing dog because I can’t get to the sheep in the arena, sheep running full out for the gate. I pick up my dog and Stephanie is like, “You need to get over the fact that I’m here. This is going to happen at trials.” You think? Yeah, I do.

I get so hung up on what I think other people should see that I make bad choices sometimes. Twice, I will point out, twice. Finally, the second time, I let Rippa just get them her way (powerful, straight, and fast) and Stephanie’s like, “Don’t let her kill them by running them into the fence!” and I yell back, “She’ll balance up when she gets up there!” Which she does, get’s out, runs them up to me, and then eases off when the sheep are in contact with me. It’s totally fine for ranch and chore work, but not so much for trials. Going to take time to get that right, and it’s okay.

But that little lamb is not keeping up so, in front of everyone, I’ve got to sort her off into a side holding pen (you’ll see it in the video). Stephanie’s like, “You want me to?” No, I say. Rippa is an excellent penning dog.

And so I ask her to walk up, lie down and try it. The older sheep take the open gate bait, but not the baby one. Steph says I need to his Rips with a “way to” and push them up more.

”I can’t yet. She won’t take it.”

”She will.”

”Way to.”

What do you think she does?

By golly, that dog does a beautiful baby Way To and puts herself in exactly the right spot and I get that baby lamb in the pen with no stress and go right back to work.

So proud. She is SUCH a nice dog. I am really proud of her. I get more and more proud the further along we get.

So then we fool around on the hill and I work on that “out” round  me thing I talked about in the last entry. This eventually bores the crap out of Rippa so I have to watch it.

It’s at this point that hubs  decides to shoot some blurry footage, so now you get video!

Anyhow, I get out of the arena and Stephanie asks me when the next trial is. “Not yet,” I say. “You need to trial to get over some of your being nervous about me. Besides, you’re ready. That dog could win in started.”

Sparkle. But also not. I try to protest as Stephanie says, “Your problem is you – all of that, it’s you. She’s a nice dog.”

”I know, I know.” Then my huz chimes in to agree.

”Just enter.”

”It’s expensive.”

”You two make enough money to trial. What, it’s $150.”

”But I want to do all three stock, that’s not cheap,” I look at my husband in protest. He’s quite supportive of this stuff and doesn’t care, despite other pressing financial issues.

“Heck, she could probably qualify in Open right now.”

”But I don’t have a drive on her.”

“You could soon.”

Anyhow, as much as I protest, hearing it from the huz and Stephanie, I have to acknowledge how scared I am to actually trial. I don’t get it for any other dog venue or anything . . . but this is stone cold serious time. People will judge me if it goes badly or I handle badly. People already liberally judge me and my dog to my face and I hate it. If I do this, the dog needs to have the best chance at success she can.

So, here’s the plan: I get my ducks and I get Rippa a baby drive. I get at least one lesson on cattle from someone so I can tune her up on them. Then I will trial.  Okay?

Like, maybe fall.

Here’s a photo of sheep the huz took:

Laziness, new places, and meditation on power and presence

Over the weekend, I went down to this competition thing for work, which afforded me a morning at Doug Manley’s “Pasture” where and a number of other friends work their dogs.

Doug took me on a tour – the many holding pens, the different sheep, the ducks, the geese, etc. It was a nice little setup in the middle of an agrarian suburban neighborhood. I was about to go into the arena and just do what I always do, but then it occurred to me – no. I have a set of eyes now, and I have something I want to work on.

That thing is Rippa going in and “slicing” off the top. Something I can’t work on well at Stephanie’s is the outrun because we have this huge arena to work in and the sheep start to take off if I get too close to set Rippa up.

So, that’s what we did. Doug put Kathy’s “flower” method (I’ve discussed in early entries) into a new and useful perspective for me – he says it’s more like thinking about it as the dog wanting to orbit the sheep and the orbit degrades. My job is to teach the dog to want to widen the orbit. Okay. Cool, I see that. Less flower, step in, step in, more consistent “out.”

He also showed me something I might have been missing with my “slingshot” outrun because I haven’t been working with Kathy since I started it – he calls it moving laterally. I set the dog up with me and the dog between the sheep, but I move wide out of her way and then when I give her the flank, and as she moves around me, I go to the sheep to hold her out on top. It doesn’t sound much different from what I told you I was doing but . . .

“You’re lazy,” Doug says, as he points out that when Rippa balances, I step in front of the sheep instead of have her bring them . . .

Yup. I started looking for cheat ways to get what I wanted to see and . . . there you are.

So anyway, back today to the regular spot. I remembered what Doug said and worked hard on the orbit and outruns. My sheep have gotten more easy to work with time because they know who my dog is and I’m able to sort them with very little stress because Rippa keeps calm and starts out good.

Toward the end of the lesson, I realized that maybe all my telling her what to do wasn’t working and since she takes pressure off pretty easy with a reminder, I would just look for her eye (she looks before she starts coming in too close) and tell her “no” when it happened. That worked really well. I was really happy with Rippa. It made her slow way down and just walk, which made everything go nice. For a bit.

The sheep reeeeeeeally want to get back to their gate, so if I so much as point that way or stop holding my end aggressively, they bolt and Rippa has to go catch them again.  So, if that happens, she starts to speed up – she has to, but I get really disappointed by that.

Stephanie was suggesting I take her out to the bull field – a space that’s like four times the size of the arena with access at the back of the arena – “out back” equivalent for Kathy’s training facility. I told her I didn’t think we were ready for that, but actually – it’s not like Rippa loses her sheep  - it might help the sheep  stop trying to escape if it’s somewhere unfamiliar – and that gate work should be good for the Rippa bear. We’ll see how things go.

And someone commented on my bite article that a dog doesn’t really need bite if they have presence. That could be true – I admit that a dog with confidence and power may not have to bite, but I like my dogs to have it anyway – it’s a tool. Given that the reason I do this is not to win trials but
to really get the whole point of these dogs (these cattle-bred dogs) and eventually have an influence on local ranchers with them – helping them have good dogs and preserving the breed’s utility.

Anywho – so what’s presence? Well, ask the sheep. When I first got into that arena, they were like HOLY NO! when we walked in. They were used to intense stares but not intense, direct movement toward them. A BC can be mighty scary to a sheep that has not seen one and only been worked by loose eyed dogs, but after a while, that events out.

Presence/power is a measure of intimidation, I’d say. When the stock sees the dog, they think, “I will not call this dog’s bluff. It is small, but I do not want to mess with it.” That’s why a dog can get away without bite. Kind of like some huge bodybuilder dude acting as a bouncer – do you really want to find out?

Fury, Rippa’s mother had it for being so tiny. I remember Kathy telling me that I needed to be careful with her on cattle or they’d call her bluff. She used a lot of bluster to make her point and it worked. I have this great photo of a cow that’s literally leaping to get out of the way of my 26 pound dog:

I love that photo.  Problem with being wee, though, is had the cow decided to challenge and she not be able to get out of the way . . . squish goes the tiny dog.

Anyhoo, part of the reason I decided that she could contribute to the breed gene pool is that she did not ever go squish.

And that’s a thing altogether to talk about – how some people think putting dogs on cattle is just mean because it’s dangerous. Sorry, but Fury and I had a deal and it extends to all of my Aussies henceforth: you were bred to do this and if you get hurt, I love you, but you should do it. I will not protect you from potential harm, but I will do my best to not put you into a situation you can’t handle.

I feel like that’s fair. I mean, sheesh, these dogs go nuts when they see cattle out in the hills when I’m driving around. Not horses, not sheep, not poultry, not even deer. Cattle. It’s hard wired in there. I want it, and I’m okay with us all taking some knocks to do what’s hardwired.

After all, I personally am hard wired to do foolhardy stuff for fun that other people never would, too.

Off to go look at photos from that trial because I do love the Fury dog and loved working her . . .  (you can, too, if you want)

When it’s time to let the dog just do the work . . .

So the last two sessions (if you haven’t figured it out yet, I’m working twice a week at Stephanie’s) have gotten better and better. So much so that this session, I thought, “Well, I should get off the big stick crutch and use the little stick.”

But this is a bad idea. We get so ahead of ourselves we forget how much foundation we need to lay to change so many things. Rippa is just now starting to figure out how to work in a larger space without the fence for help – why would I add something else to that mix if she hasn’t got it dialed? And so, no, I stayed with my 8 foot stick.

But I have to say, this work today was pretty flawless in terms of my setting expectations.

We are now just sorting the sheep ourselves. Stephanie generally lets the sheep out and then sorts out the sheep she wants into a smaller squeeze chute off the arena, but I’ve been taught how to sort with just a gate so all I need to do is ask Rippa to walk up to the sheep, and she’ll easily go around the barn obstacle and bring them to me and the gate. They didn’t really want to do that today (instead wanting to circle), so it took a few goes, but once Rippa got what I wanted, she positioned herself in a balanced spot so that the sheep would stop in front of the gate.

It takes some work to pull the adult lesson sheep out of the lambs, but she would inch forward without my asking as I needed it and we got a good batch of four sheep today.

As soon as we got them out, they headed to the middle of the arena, so while I closed the gate, I let Rippa get them without giving her a command. She starts out slow to see if I want it to happen and if I say nothing, she starts heading toward them.

It’s not a beautiful outrun where she stays way outside their flight zone and then dips in at the top – it’s a pretty rough gather in that she just kind of tips in and banks them toward me, but she does it, and then when they come up to me at the gate, she stops herself. I’m good with that. That’s healthy, happy, functional work and we can work on the fancy later – the foundation for what’s expected (calm control of the livestock) is laid and she’s half-way out of the arena getting them so hey, I’m happy.

The sheep are nearly always spooked, but I have figured out that if I show them how Rippa controls them (unlike the eye-dog BCs she’s used to who work them very differently) by doing silent half-moons on the fence while Rippa balances up and reads her sheep, we can start going.

And so we did. We headed out all the way to the end of the arena and back – not straight, mind you, lots of zigging, but we did it.

At this point, I think I need to focus on handling my end of the sheep because they are light enough to just blow past me if I don’t sometimes block them and let Rippa figure out where she needs to be to stop running like crazy as she wears them back and forth  - she’s getting wider and wider and will go “out” if I remind her, but I don’t really want to have to keep “out”ing her, so I’m trying to keep it to a minimum – right now my goal is less command oriented and more just letting Rippa use her instinct and knowledge to work the sheep.

I have to say – it’s fun to watch. Now that she’s learned not to go flat on the top but that with sheep like this, you win by getting further out, it’s cool to watch her do it. She gets a massive workout because the sheep don’t easily settle  and she can’t just fall in behind them – she’s got to move to each side to check on the sheep and she’s got to poke them back in (but then they over correct and it’s back to the other side), but it looks good from where I sit.

Last lesson, we did some center pen work (FABULOUS) but I made the mistake of opening the gate to send her in and the whether with horns fully rammed her. Rippa didn’t blink – she just went back to work – not even made at the ram, but definitely watching him.

This work there was a ewe that kept breaking off (I mentioned this ewe in earlier lessons a couple months ago) and Rippa did a great job of not letting her get too far. She tends to drop the singleton if they get out too much and go, naturally, to the bigger group and bring them to her – I can hear Kathy yelling, “Bring the many to the one!” I’m impressed the dog is doing it. I’m not sure I want her to do that in trialing scenarios, but it shows me her stock sense and I’ll let her  have it.

And then, since she’d been working so hard, we got back to the gate, she balanced up, I opened the gate, and we put them away.

It was pretty great. Not all days will be that great, but it’s tangible progress and feels great after a few weeks ago when I was nervous that the arena was too big and the sheep too light.

The plan now is to keep putting miles on until Rippa manages them herself, then go to the short stick, and then we’ll start working on some issues (the less than beautiful outrun, she goes a little flat on the top instead of staying out) and refining our commands.